This is why we need a Bill of Rights

It has already been revealed that it’s not terribly difficult to get a page on the blacklist.

What I wonder is: what if you link to a page on the blacklist and didn’t know it was there?

What if you linked to a page before it was blacklisted?

Are we meant to go through the list and all our blog posts (and other pages) every day to make sure we are in compliance?

Apart from the freedom of speech and censorship issues – the implications of which are pretty horrific in themselves – an expectation like that would be enormously onerous and, in itself, oppressive of speech.

2 Responses

I watched Insight last night, which was addressing the web censorship issue. Stephen Conroy was talking to some people whose sites had ended up on the blacklist through hacking or similar, and kept saying “Your site wasn’t banned, only one page on it” in this tone that firmly implied he thought they were idiots.

He very keenly didn’t mention the bit where a page linking to a blacklisted page is often blacklisted itself… and most websites link internally.